Rocky Mountain Bottle Company: Leading the Way for Glass Recycling

Bill Dillaman’s motto is that everything tastes better in glass. It’s hard to argue with him when you learn that he works at Rocky Mountain Bottle Company in Wheatridge, Colorado.

Content provided by MillerCoors

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There, recycled glass, known as cullet, is turned into new 12-oz. amber and clear glass bottles.

“The dilemma for us is we can’t get enough cullet,” explains Dillaman, the plant manager. “We could operate these furnaces on 100 percent cullet if we could get enough.”

The Rocky Mountain Bottle Company must use natural resources to make up the difference. These resources include sand, soda ash and limestone. But for every ton of recycled glass they receive, more than a ton of these natural resources are saved!

So Rocky Mountain Bottle Company reached out to the public and local organizations for ideas on how to increase recycling in the community. One of the best plans to come out of the brainstorming sessions was to employ veterans to collect glass for the bottling company. With that, Veterans Gone Green : A Glass Recycling Company was born.

“Our landfills are filling up,” says Deb Roberts, who owns Veterans Gone Green. “This is a win-win. It’s a chance for vets to once again serve their country and to help clean up the Earth.”